Mugabe’s new best friends

Tazivei, a tough-looking 30 year-old, works at the S&M brickworks outside Harare, and he's just been paid. He should be a happy man, but he's not. He's covered in bites from lice, his hands and feet are corrugated with painful cracks, he works in filthy conditions and his pay is miserably low. Tazivei works for the Chinese.

The Chinese are Mugabe's new friends. China is currently the world's biggest investor in Zimbabwe, and Chinese-owned businessmen flourish here (the southern part of Harare has become known as China City). One of them is Mr Meng, who owns S&M.

Tazivei stuffs his pay in his pocket, and gestures around the brickworks. "Look at it. There are no toilets here. That's why it stinks. We have to go where